The invention concerns exercising equipment, and specifically a system utilizing flexible bars to facilitate a nearly unlimited number of different exercises for users of different sizes and strengths.
Exercising equipment has been available in many different forms. From free weight lifting to various types of machines that a user sits on or stands on and which operate with weights, cables and pulleys or with compressed air, hydraulic or electrical resistance or other types of resistance, these exercising systems and devices have usually been provided in health clubs and gyms. Other machines have been devised primarily for the home market, for individual users. One example is sold as the Bowflex exercising machine, a freestanding apparatus that includes cantilevered bars that are tapered, so as to bend more at their ends, for performing several exercises. The exercises available, and the variation in performing them, are very limited.
Most exercise machines are single purpose exercise machines. Movement is restricted to the fixed mechanical motion of the machine that provides resistance in a certain direction with either a handle or lever. The resistance is usually a steel weight connected through a cable to a handle, very rigid with very little give, not springy. Most prior equipment restricts people to very unnatural body posture while exercising. Either one is lying on his back or leaning the chest against something, or with restrictive motion against the back. Other machines are very limited compared to the present system, restrictive in access, i.e. getting on and off the machine.
There is a need for a more comprehensive, effective and easily used exercising and physiotherapy system for non-impact exercising of numerous muscles and joints of the body to achieve improvements in a patient's strength and range of motion, balance and coordination for users of widely varying sizes, strengths (from the strongest in the world to the weakest), physical abilities and ranges of joint motion. Such a system should provide for both horizontal and vertical exercises, involving the muscles of the arms, legs, neck, back, stomach and other parts of the body.